Speaking of G&H, I wonder what happened to Stieg Hedlund. Clearly, the lead designer of Diablo II (and I think credited with the whole merc-hireling concept in D2) deserved a better fate. Such is the danger of leaving Blizzard for entrepreneurial waters.

STO? I just wanna be a red-shirt. I'll sound a little like Sam Rockwell early in GalaxyQuest. "I don't wanna die!!!!!!!!!"

I wonder if it uses the same engine as Champions Online?*shudders* I hope they don't say the first mission is, "Kill 25 Tribbles and Bring Me Their Furs!"

PC Gamer is so thin now, I'm not sure it's even 10 pages long anymore. I kid, but I don't buy it anymore (I did regularly for 12 years or more) because it's not even long enough to make good bedroom reader material anymore (imho, your mileage my vary).

PC Gamer is so thin now, I'm not sure it's even 10 pages long anymore. I kid, but I don't buy it anymore (I did regularly for 12 years or more) because it's not even long enough to make good bedroom reader material anymore (imho, your mileage my vary).

Yeah, I let my sub expire a while back too. Not worth reading anymore.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

"We didn't think it would be very interesting to sit down in the transporter room and press a button for twenty hours to level up, and then maybe get to work in engineering for a while," says executive producer Craig Zinkievich.

Wait. That sounds like every MMO I've ever played. Well, granted, change "button" to the plural.

I do like the concept of your individual crew members being your "skills." It reminds me a little bit of the canceled Gods & Heroes in that regard.

I want to go to Vulcan and start a Dr. Phil show. I will Start getting those emotionally shut down pointy ears in touch with their inner child.Once we locate that inner child, I'm going to kick its little ass.

I want to go to Vulcan and start a Dr. Phil show. I will Start getting those emotionally shut down pointy ears in touch with their inner child.Once we locate that inner child, I'm going to kick its little ass.

I want to go to Vulcan and start a Dr. Phil show. I will Start getting those emotionally shut down pointy ears in touch with their inner child.Once we locate that inner child, I'm going to kick its little ass.

Pretty useful page of dev chat transcripts (latest was Sept. 22):http://www.startrekonline.com/dev_chatsOne thing I noticed is a mention that they'll talk more about Klingon space combat later in the "PR cycle." The initial info/publicity focus is on Federation stuff.

Ten Ton Hammer: In addition to staying true to the IP, what would you say are some of the other major obstacles you’ve recently overcome in developing the game?

Craig: Ground combat.

We did a lot of fast iteration early on with space combat, to make sure it felt right, and make sure it was cool. We probably got lucky with a couple of choices we made. Pretty much anyone who’s tried it has said “wow. There’s nothing else like it. It’s amazing.” We’re really proud of that.

I think the ground combat was something that was much harder to get right, looking back at the project. It was much harder to get the ground combat to feel cool, feel fast paced, feel Star Trek, and really satisfy all of the things we need out of ground combat. At the same time, we needed to live up to the really cool space combat; making sure that when you’re on the ground, you’re not thinking “when can I get back in my spaceship?”

I would say within the last few months we’ve tuned and tweaked and got ground combat to the point where it’s good, and it’s fun, and something we want to do. When you get into the game, you’re not thinking “I want to do space combat,” but rather “I want to do some of this, and some of that, and I want to do some of that, too.”

Has it been answered anywhere, do we get to have multiple ships? Or can we only pick one type per rank. Like EVE where we could just go dock and switch out ships that would better suite the mission/quest we are on.

Has it been answered anywhere, do we get to have multiple ships? Or can we only pick one type per rank. Like EVE where we could just go dock and switch out ships that would better suite the mission/quest we are on.

Sounds to me like you have one ship until you upgrade it to a different one.

The really cool thing is, though, that everything they find - every core instability, any backend tools - is immediately inherited by the Star Trek project, because we use the same core engine. Any issue that Champions has found, Star Trek automatically gets fixed.

Well, THAT quote scared me. Although it's followed by, basically, "blah blah anything screwed up in Champions is already fixed for Star Trek." Almost like Champions is the Alpha test for STO.

It's interesting that Klingon-play is an "unlockable."

Quote

Eurogamer: I see! And forgive my ignorance, but can I be a Klingon?

Craig Zinkievich: Yes! We plan on shipping with the ability to play as Federation and play on the Klingon side. The Klingon gameplay is going to be drastically different to the Federation gameplay. It's going to be a lot more focused on PvP; their advancement is a little bit different - it is not a full-on story-driven game like the Federation.

Eurogamer: You mentioned unlock earlier - are the Klingons going to be available from the start?

Craig Zinkievich: The Klingon gameplay will unlock, but not deep in the game - it will take several hours to unlock the ability to create a Klingon player.

And there's some interesting stuff towards the end about the business (i.e., Microsoft and Sony) obstacles to getting MMOs onto consoles:

Quote

Craig Zinkievich: I can only speak for the development side of things. When it comes to the business, I'll be honest, the business part of bringing MMOs to consoles has been really sticky... Trying to get Sony, trying to get Microsoft to really understand MMOs; really understand what needs to happen for MMOs, and then figure out all the business aspects of those games, has really been a difficulty for all of the MMO developers.

Final Fantasy [XI] has been on the Xbox 360 for a while, but so many exceptions were made for that game, because at the time, the Xbox was trying to take market share and whatnot. So when it comes to the business, to how the first-parties - Microsoft and Sony - support MMOs, and what technologies we need in order to have our games run well, networking-wise and chat-wise and all that sort of stuff - those have been the really big hangups.

He claims to have been the producer on City of Heroes, and City of Villains, though I swear I don't remember the name at all.

According to VideoGamer (via Craig Zinkievich), Cryptic has confirmed that their upcoming MMO, Star Trek Online, is scheduled for a Q1 2010 release. In addition to stating that the game would be out between January and March of next year, Cryptic also made mention that the launch of a closed beta was "just around the corner". Watch for a press release on the beta coming out in the next couple of days. Me please!

According to VideoGamer (via Craig Zinkievich), Cryptic has confirmed that their upcoming MMO, Star Trek Online, is scheduled for a Q1 2010 release. In addition to stating that the game would be out between January and March of next year, Cryptic also made mention that the launch of a closed beta was "just around the corner". Watch for a press release on the beta coming out in the next couple of days. Me please!

According to VideoGamer (via Craig Zinkievich), Cryptic has confirmed that their upcoming MMO, Star Trek Online, is scheduled for a Q1 2010 release. In addition to stating that the game would be out between January and March of next year, Cryptic also made mention that the launch of a closed beta was "just around the corner". Watch for a press release on the beta coming out in the next couple of days. Me please!

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Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

There seems to be speculation they're letting people in in waves. Which I guess makes sense if they're trying to limit bandwidth problems. For Champions Online it was awful on the open beta launch day just trying to get in the game. They had screwed up the pre-launch beta downloads and instead of having all those pre-downloads install a small file it started installing the whole 2gig game. The downloading was so slow as everyone else was trying to do the same thing. So if they're doing the waves it may be to avoid having it take a full day for people to download the game.

It would be nice to have them explain what their plans are for adding people.

Man, you should see the people just outright BITCHING on the CO and STO forums right now. In summary:

1) People who purchased a Lifetime or a 6 Month subscription got guaranteed Closed Beta access to STO.2) People thought that meant that they'd ALL get in at Day 1 of Closed Beta.3) People go ape shit when #2 doesn't happen.

Just...wrong. I have the 6 month sub thing, so I know I'll get in (and more than likely soon). But I have plenty of games to tide me over in the meantime.

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I forgot I started this thread. I can delete it now and end all our closed beta misery!!!!

Bahahahaha! Nah, I'd never do that.

I would say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, just like the road to "blackmailing gamers into pre-ordering/pre-subscribing/committing to long term subscriber deals" is also paved with good intentions... I'm sure it was in the fine print people weren't guaranteed to get in right away, blah blah, but if it pisses people off (validly or not), the chances they'll stay with Champions after their 6-month deal ends takes a hit. If you're lifetime, well, then there's not much of a financial way to show you're unhappy other than maybe not to buy the inevitable expansion.

My brother gets in the beta. I go over to his house and watch him play for a couple hours. I come back and talk about the game here. Is that some sort of NDA breach? Considering I'm not in the beta, I don't see how it would be, but I don't know. Is my brother breaking NDA by even letting me watch him play? I know it might sound like really dumb questions, but I seriously don't know how any of that stuff works.

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LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."

I bought the 6 month thing but quit the game about a month ago. Would I still be notified of my spot in the beta?

As the devs have said, all 6 month and lifers will get into the closed beta. It's just a question of how quickly.

Too bad I don't have the confidence in what "devs" say as you do.........We'll see.

I do agree, don't get me wrong - the CO devs have screwed up a LOT so far as far as their game goes. It's quite scary since 'in theory' some of these devs came from a MMO that's going on 6 years now in full release.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

As I kept (perhaps anally retentively on my part ) pointing out in the Champions thread, the "new" Cryptic included initially 2 former COH devs (I recall reading on the COH boards that only one COH dev other than Emmert himself accepted the offer to move over to the "new" Cryptic - the rest wanted to keep working on COH and form what became Paragon Studios). Later I read a couple more did decide to move over and join the "new" Cryptic. I believe one dev who goes by "pohsyb" (something like that) and worked on COH forever, suddenly started appearing as a dev in the Champions forums late in open beta. Then I swear I saw him posting again in the COH forums officially. So I don't know what was going on there.

So it wasn't by any stretch a case of "Oh here's the COH dev team, and that team stayed intact and worked on COH for 6 years, and they went on to do Champions." More than likely, some of the original dev team left after COH launched (updating an MMO is way different than developing one to launch, many interviews suggest). It was more like "a couple COH devs hire a bunch of other devs to work on a new MMO."

So in essence (as I see it, I guess Emmert might see it differently), Champions was put together by a bunch of probably talented folks with little or no experience with MMOs at all. So if it seems like they have made a lot of mistakes and snafus that withered veteran MMO developers wouldn't make, I have to speculate that's the reason.

The Official Word is they "simply" didn't have enough spots in the first day of STO closed beta to get everyone in on Day One. Presumably they're only running it on one server, and they can't expand capacity in a minute. You could say, couldn't they just calculate the number of 6-month and lifetime subscribers they got, add in closed beta slots provided through other means and go "Bingo! We need exactly that amount of server capacity so that's what we'll do?" I don't have an answer.

I'm reminded of some of these breathless MMO pre-order marketing schemes where they tout that pre-ordering gets you into closed beta or open beta, but you eventually find out you'd get into said beta quicker by going through MMORPG.com, Fileplanet, or some other route to get a distributed beta key. Then if people complain they say, "We didn't say WHEN you'd get into open/closed beta, we just said you *would*." And so likewise presumably Cryptic is saying they didn't promise people they would get in on "Day 1" of STO closed beta, only that they "would get in." Isn't fine print and "parsing language" wonderful?

Platform doubts aside, I walked away from Star Trek Online with a sentiment echoed by many other players around me; still deep in development, it has a long way to go to live up to the potential of the franchise. But it glimmers with the potential to do so, and given enough time and love could fulfil its assigned role of being the engaging, deep, and - most importantly - fun MMO that fans are craving.

It still seems like Microsoft itself (ironically, I mean, you'd think they'd *want* MMOs to infiltrate the XBox360 market) is the stumbling block to this or Champions ever moving onto consoles, due to their presumably wanting a "piece of the action" on console MMO fees. It doesn't sound like publisher Atari's making any headway on that (or perhaps they are negotiating and can't talk).

The reason I used 'in theory', Blackjack, is that when I posted the exact same thing (2 devs from CoX coming over to work on CO) I was told I was flat out wrong by the ones running the forums. Frankly, I don't know if they were lying to me or not, but since then I've stopped saying that in my posts.

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